Welcome to the NICE Homepage
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Mission Goals and Objectives
The goal of the NICE mission is to answer the question:
How do neutral dynamics drive ionospheric variability?
NICE will approach this goal with three targeted investigations
of neutral-ion coupling:
- How do large-scale atmospheric waves control the
at low latitudes?
- What causes the day-to-day variability in the low-
latitude ionosphere observed by plasma drift
measurements?
- During magnetic storms, what causes the enhancement of
ionospheric plasma at low latitudes?
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Mission Definition
NICE will discover how winds and composition of the
drive the electric fields and chemical reactions
that control Earth's ionosphere. The mission will resolve competing theories about the low-latitude ionospheric dynamo,
and will explain how large-scale waves from the lower atmosphere can couple to the ionosphere and upper atmosphere. Understanding
neutral-ion coupling in Earth's atmosphere has applications for solar and planetary atmospheres including Mars and Jupiter.
NICE will be the first mission to simultaneously measure all the key parameters that both characterize and drive the
ionosphere. It will remotely measure the neutral wind, temperature, composition, atmospheric and ionospheric density
distributions as well as make in-situ measurements of the ion motion. NICE uses flight-tested science instruments in a
low-inclination orbit where the geometry magnetically links the in-situ and remote sensing measurements.
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